ARBT – Page 3 – ARBTServer

August 26, 2015October 6, 2017

General server news

So things have been a little slow around ARBTland, mostly because I haven’t been online much in the past few weeks. (Stupid real life.) That said, over the past couple of weeks there have been a few changes of note.

First of all we got another visitor from WSE – Rudie! Always glad for the cross pollination between the two servers.

In terms of build news, the monument behind spawn keeps on expanding as new people come in. Rate we’re going that things going to extend into the sea. In addition to adding Rudie, FatalDeath and Billybob decided to silly up their statues by giving them tongues.

FatalDeath has been working on a wizard tower, and Rudie has also been building a very fairy-appropriate home in a large artificially created stump.

I’ve been busy too. Started working on a new skyscraper not far from Wacker Tower, loosely based on a building from SimCity BuildIt, which I’ve been also playing some on the side.

Lastly 5 has been working on a secret project under the Rainbow Balloon. Did I post pictures of that since I refinished it?

One thing I’ve been irked by since a few game updates ago – when they changed all the lighting, the ocean lost its translucency. It’s now REALLY hard to see underwater, which is a pain if you’re building something really deep under, and impossible if you’re trying to take pictures of said something, so the best I can do is sorta present a vague blob under the water taken from the surface.

In server improvement news, I’ve been waffling on transferring the game to an external server for a bit, weighing pros and cons of each platform. I’ve all but decided that I want to move the game to Pocketmine, as I have some experience with running it and it offers the most flexibility and customizability right now. But on the downside, it’s lagtastic, and mobs don’t work yet, which is a bummer; I like having random creatures roaming the world. It gives what can often be a lonely game a little bit of life. I supppose I could treat the missing mobs as a temporary problem, as the goal of PM will be to eventually replicate the full experience of the game, and its main programmer now works for Minecraft proper. The other major problem is that transferring/ MCPE worlds to PM is still an ordeal thanks to the leveldb storage format being a pain in the butt to work with/translate. I and others have put so much time and love and work into this world, so its pretty important that we continue to be able to play with it.

“And that’s Numberwang.”

August 4, 2015October 6, 2017

The Back-From-Hiatus Runs

OMG y’all I am SO behind on posting LOL. So a quick recap on what is New, Improved and Different on the ARBTserver:

We had a new face from WSE visit on Monday: welcome Kyster!
There is now a road extension from the Pyramid, through the huge desert biome and ending at the village Hachi discovered a few runs back.
The ARBTServer monument has been extended, with two more spaces added for statues. May shove it out two more spaces just so ARBT lines up in the middle evenly again, haven’t decided.
I’ve finished reskinning the hot air balloon. It is now a riotous rainbow. And the inside jungle has been growing nicely.
While scouting coastline for a Mystery Build, I stumbled across Village #4 southwest of spawn. More roadbuilding in my future, no doubt.
I have also started a Mystery Build a ways from Spawn. Lets just say last weeks’ trip to Martha’s Vineyard left me rather… inspired.

Speaking of which, the downside of the Nether coming in the next update is no more nether reactor. 🙁 I’m going to have to find a few spots for random netherrack spires just for the hell of it before it disappears entirely.

July 30, 2015October 5, 2017

Meanwhile on Worst Server Ever…

Since /r/WorstServerEver started up a new map last month I’ve been hanging out over there whenever I’m not running game. It’s actually a really nice, laid back Survival server where people hang out, chill, build stuff and complain about chunk lag (which, being a pocketmine server, is kinda expected). I like the regulars there quite a bit, and there’s been a lot of cross-pollination between players there and players here, as DoublePositive, Batman5024 (? don’t know if I got the number right) FatalDeath, Hachi, and Umbrella_Hermit play there as well.

Well. First thing one tends to do is find oneself a bit of unclaimed land and make a base. Except the area around “spawncano” is pretty densely developed/populated so I decided despite the chunk lag to walk pretty far out along one of the overpasses until it ended in a hill, then I walked down some of Skribe’s dirt paths until THEY ended, fell into a ravine (thankfully not a deep one) climbed out, walked some more, and found a hill at the border of a jungle biome and a desert to dig out a home for myself. I think I managed rather adequately.

I’m not anywhere near done – I want to punch through the hill I’m colonizing eventually and build a log cabin style house above the main room, in similar style to Spawnhouse on my world, which got built almost exactly the same way. I also plan to continue with the layers of cobblestone basements, which hearken back to similar dig-out-and-redecorate-in-cobblestone style mines I tend to make on almost every server I have.

It actually doesn’t quite look like this anymore – I decided to expand each of the basement outwards after I took these pictures.

Anyway this is all very nice but it was near impossible FINDING it every time the server rebooted – there was a lot of wandering around, getting lost, and trying to figure out which acacia tree at the border of an unloaded chunk was the one I had to pass. So eventually I got annoyed with it and decided you know what… I’m going to dig a tunnel back to spawn area so that I can just run that way to my base. So I took some coordinates, changed my job to “miner” and got busy digging, and once I’d dug a path all the way through, I lined it in cobble, torches and gravel, because y’all know me and uniform tunnels.

So starting with this tiny cobble building on the shore of the swamp a ways behind Hachi’s house (you know the place)*, here is my weird and wonderful path home.

It's a long way down. — It’s a long way down.

This server has a lot of ravines.... — This server has a lot of ravines….

July 22, 2015October 5, 2017

Server news, and the Eating of Us by Hai.

I ran back to back Sunday and Monday this week, though each run had its own problems to contend with – Sundays was entirely beset by external factors (a movie mid afternoon, a cable service disruption) while Manday’s (what few they were) were entirely game related. But more on that later.

Over the two runs, 576875 continued working on Troll Village improvements, namely working on adding a tavern to it in the same style. Henry10030 added an good exchange tent over his underground base near spawn. Double Positive experimented with his DATS roads. We were visited intermittently by Batman3054, Hachi and Umbrella_Hermit. Swarmhut, as far as I could tell, first mainly flitted around assisting people before leading the remaining players in some rousing sign-language Disney karaoke.

And then there was the fire, lol.

Batman swears it was an accident, and I believe him, having had several fire/lava mishaps myself in the past. I think he was trying to clear a bit of land away and the fire got through the wall he put up to block it and ravaged about in the forest next to Spawn. between the fire spreading and the water needed to contain it lag was a major problem both for the players and for the firefighting, so I made an executive decision and booted everyone out so I could take the fire down quicker. It did indeed get handled after a frantic ten or so minutes and came within catching distance of the log cabin in my last post, but ultimately once the mess was cleaned up no builds were lost and not much was destroyed other than tree cover, which can be easily re-seeded. I don’t think I’ll build a memorial tower to this fire, especially as Bat felt bad enough about it as it was, but i note it here for server news posterity.

Lastly I mentioned this on Reddit, but have yet to here: ARBTserver is on official hiatus until August 3rd due to impending vacation with the family. There is some good news aside from that – my desktop was been partially resurrected tonight and I hope to get it mostly recovered and running before I leave. I probably won’t have time to get any kind of hosty situation going, but it does mean that I’ll be able to work on it immediately on my return, so wooooo for that!

ARBT out.

July 19, 2015October 5, 2017

Three Small Builds

I’ve been doing small quickie projects in my world just to pass time and fill up space. (Also procrastinating from finishing other stuff.) Finished up three smallish things.

The Cabin in the Woods

There’s this log cabin style house in Orange, MA on Rte. 202 (its here, if anyone wants to look at it in Google Street View) that we pass a lot on the way to Rt. 2. Every single time we did I kept thinking “oh… I should try making a log cabin in Minecraft” and then promptly forgetting about it. And then I didn’t forget.

I apparently have a thing for roses and potatoes. XD

The attic came out claustrophobic because I mathed wrong.

This was sort of a test run for what I plan to be the house atop my base on WSE, and I’m kinda glad I did it here first because I’m not quite happy with the way this came out. I think next time I attempt something like this a) wider on all sides so I end up with more of an attic, b) make the sides an even number of blocks so the roof peaks better. But for what it is, it’s kind of adorable. I think I will definitely be making more of this style house with different woods in the future.

The Haunted Ruin

Located on a small island not far from The Four Guardians is a ruin of… a small castle? a cathedral? a watchtower? People exchange theories about it in whispers, discussing the horrors that can be found within its cracked, mossy walls. Legends about about the source of the flame that still burns at the top of the crumbling but mostly intact tower that still at one end and never seems to go out. Perhaps it is demonic in nature. No one really knows….

Spiderboat, Spiderboat, does whatever a Spiderboat does... — Spiderboat, Spiderboat, does whatever a Spiderboat does…

Looking down from one of the crumbly pillars

Okay reality time – I started building a castle/cathedral thing on this island and kinda lost steam midway through. I’d put a bit of work into it, though and didn’t want to lose it completely, and then I got the idea of “ruining” it. So I built a 4×4 TNT bomb at one corner, set it off, then rebuilt some of the destruction with mossy cobblestone, mossy brick and cracked brick, strewed some cobwebs about, and then tossed in a few monster spawners. Voila, haunted ruin!

Significantly less creepy during the day.

Rainbow Balloon

I adore hot air balloons. There’s something rather intensely romantic about them. Honestly I am a fan of a lot of floating air transport like balloons, blimps and zeppelins. The latter are quite relevant to my steam- and decopunk interests.

I was initially thinking of making a zeppelin, but decided I wasn’t up to math-ing out an ellipsoid, but I could probably manage a sphere. I didn’t quite, but came close enough I think.

I’m not quite done with the exterior of this – I’m still replacing most of the white stained clay I initially used with wool in the rainbow stripey pattern you see in the picture.I do love how the flame source and the gondola came out, especially as I’d been mulling over what to make it out of and then realized if I used jungle wood, I could use cocoa pods as “ballast”

The really fun part about the balloon though is the inside.

Is that... dirt up there? huh? — Is that… dirt up there? huh?

When I was building out the shape I was using dirt to pad out the clay so I had something against which to lay the next layer of it. Since I was kinda to lazy to remove it, it ended up being this bizarrely neat looking spherical interior.

I think when the grass finishes spreading, I’ll come back, plant some jungle trees, grow vines from the top of of the balloon and make it into a seekrit cocoa farm. 🙂

So yeah, I’ve been busy, but I’ve been keeping my hand in doing littler stuff. Someday I’ll finish up the bigger stuff I’m working on. Someday. *sigh*

July 18, 2015October 5, 2017

Sand Baori

A few years ago I went to see The Fall. It’s a gorgeous hot mess of a movie, if anyone’s interested. It’s a Tarsem movie, they’re all gorgeous and weird, and kind of hot messes, lol. Anyway, in among all the gorgeous weirdness, was one particular scene shot on an eye-boggling location.

What in the name of MC Escher...? — What in the name of MC Escher…?

I dismissed it as a special effect – there couldn’t be an actual place that looked like that. I completely forgot about it until the same location (or, as I found out later, a set based on it) popped up in The Dark Knight Rises several years later.

Behind Christian Bale and his angst... — Behind Christian Bale and his angst…

What.

I did a bit of googling and OMG. Yes. This place actually exists. It’s an ancient stepwell in India called Chand Baori, and it looks every bit as awesome as the movies make them look.

Stairs & stairs & stairs... — Stairs & stairs & stairs…

Awesome right?

So of course I’m looking at this huge thing and thinking “Hey… wouldn’t look cool if I built it in minecraft?”

Yes. Yes it would. — Yes. Yes, it would.

This was a bear of a build – digging out the space from the middle outwards took forever even with scads of TNT, and then you would be surprised how long it takes to precisely line up all those stairs. And then doing the fortification at the top. It’s no real wonder I ran out of steam and didn’t do the temple in the middle. Still it looks awesome – goodness knows everyone who visits it for the first time is all !!! when they visit it. My favorite reaction is still Palcto’s “Is this a Death Arena???” (He still calls it that when he visits. XD)

I have my view distance set to 350 blocks, which is over the max amount for my phone as determined by the game, but it makes for such good pictures. You can see across the swamp to Wacker Tower in that one.

It looks super awesome from the top. Just the TEXTURE of it.

A looooong corridor down one side of the fort.

Now comes with chicken!

So about that bit of water filling the lower stairs of this build. Since I wasn’t building the temple, I thought it’d be cool to make the bit of water at the bottom more interesting…

The chicken is not the interesting part.

So as you can see it goes down several more levels under the water. But what’s in the very center?

Hey - where are we? — Hey – where are we?

I’m always creating stuff with the idea that I’m going to turn this world into a more public server someday. So I designed the lower level as a hidden apartment complex. I think Wee Beast does have a base down here, but the rest is empty. In fact, I may not actually be finished digging some of the units out lol. Someday.

By the way – I do design a lot of these builds on graph paper. Here’s a rough sketch of the apartment level floor plans:

Keeps the hands busy while you're on the phone. — Keeps the hands busy while you’re on the phone.

also gives me chance to use netherbrick, which is one of my favorite textures in the game – I just dont get much practical use out of it.

Bookshelves are another big Thing I like To Use A Lot.

This way ends up at a stairwell on the west side of the structure.

But if you keep going down the hallway instead of climbing out…

I’m a big fan of preserving natural terrain or caves or other generated weirdness in and around my builds, or at least faking that I did so more or less convincingly. There was a waterfall here, but it was only a single stream and flooded the area I needed to put floor, so I dug it a pit to drain into and widen it a little.

Keep walking though, and eventually you come to…

This was actually the first station I had to add to the Netherrack line after it was built, which partially explains why this station was on the other side of the tracks from the rest of them. (Also easier to connect the rest of the structure.)

Sand Baori actually sits on the Granite line as well, via an unconnected subway station on the north side.

I… might have a subway station formula I adhere to… >_>

Anyway, that’s the build!I leave you with an animated version of today’s cover photo:

sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days... — sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days…
(click to animate)

A few more pictures from my very first server run can be found at this post.

World: Main
Location: 131 64 -142
Creation Mode: Creative
Build completed:Jan 2015

July 9, 2015October 5, 2017

Server time!

Monday night your intrepid heroine and host of the server came home with a horrid stomachache, so I canceled server time for that night. To make up for it I ran Wednesday night instead.

It was a fairly low key evening with a bit less lag and voidspawning than usual and people mostly worked on their own stuff. DoublePositive, anticipating 0.12, built a nether portal behind spawn and finished up stuff in Spawner Land.

Also in the spirit of preparing for 0.12, 576875 went out to the Troll village and started shoring it up against Things to Come. Hachi finished his water temple and made it super creepy by filling the fort part of it with spiders.

Dyaaagh Minecraft spiders will never not creep me out. And I like spiders in real life! Anyway I hope Hachi posts about it at some point, there was a whole backstory and mythology that went with this build. Maybe when he finishes the companion structures he’s planning.

We were also joined by Batman3054 from Worst Server Ever, who set up shop near DoublePositive’s. And Swarmhut did something adorable besides flit around dressed in a bee suit.

There was also a fair bit of players getting bored with stuff between building and trying to reel each other in with fishing lines. I don’t know why hooking other players works (bug? feature?) but it does mean that if you go AFK (which I did a fair bit last night owing to some real life things demanding my attention) you could come back to find yourself sowmwhere completely different, or, what happened most often to me, up a tree with weird structures built around me, lol. Not so sure I like being fished as it always seems to happen when I’m in the chat window and can’t really see whats going on, but it’s a thing, and the gang is trying to brainstorm possible games to make up around it.

At the end of the evening Hachi took off due east from spawn and stumbled into a huge desert waste bordered by jungle and savannah, and across the sandstone village pictured above seated at the edge of it. (We looked. No stronghold, but hey, mineshaft!) Guess I know where I’m running some road this week. Interestingly enough this was a part of the map that I had explored briefly before when I first started playing in it a year ago. Well, “explored” is a generous word, got completely lost is more like it. This was in the very beginning when the world was still Survival, I didn’t know the cobblestone trick yet and hadn’t put together a compass. So I started marking my trail with torches on blocks and swam when I came to the edge. I got lucky and ended up very close to spawn on the other side. I’d meant to go back sometime, but never got around to it until last week when I blundered into the jungle biome on the desert’s other side.

Hachi continued flying far out past where I explored and the new terrain generating made for interesting errors on the rest of our parts – namely have terrain disappear out from under out feet. Note to self, the game does not like it when players get too separated.

Meanwhile in other news, I’m in the middle of three build posts (sigh) and I really must make some posts about my adventures on Worst Server Ever and musings about possible hosting solutions for the game. I’m also working on an out of game but still Minecraft related project for the Wee Beast’s birthday. There are not enough hours in my day, I swear.

ARBT out!

July 5, 2015October 5, 2017

Won’t you take me to… MURDERTOOOOOOOWN!

Just putting this here for Reasons. Sing the title along to it, okay? 😀

I was telling Wee Beastie about the time I backed up the server and then said all server rules were off the table and how the area around spawn devolved into mess and murder. He of course thought this sounded like fun and asked if we could do that before he goes back to his mom’s. Sure, why not, right?

Turns out Sunday afternoon isn’t the best time for an open run, as aside from a brief appearance from Swarmhut at the very beginning, only 576875 showed up and stayed for the entirety of what very quickly became known as “MURDERTOWN.” Which mostly devolved into Beastie and I “murdering each other IN THE FACE” and 5 sniping the winner to death from afar. 5 was not privy to 8 year old side commentary such as “COME AT ME BRO, I’VE GOT A HOE!” which may have resulted in me dying in-game a couple of times because I was dying laughing IRL.

Wee Beastie then found a lava pool just to the north of spawn and, well, he did what he does best:

Burn baby burn... spawnhouse inferno — Burn baby burn… spawnhouse inferno

Yeah about that – here’s the thing about lava-bombing your spawn point – if you get murdered afterward? YOU SPAWN IN FIRE. OW.

So yeah another day where I’m very very glad I can restore from backup because while it’s fun to destroy things? *twitch*

Mad props to 5 for being patient with the small one and his need to murder everything. In the face. XD

Back to your murder free scheduled programming tomorrow!

June 30, 2015October 5, 2017

Open server, 6/29/2015

Note: Written before update 1.1.0 when the direction of the sunrise/set was fixed. North here is now west.

A fairly low key evening was had tonight, with a concentration on finishing up builds people had started earlier.

5 and Swarm finished the minigame arena they’ve been working on.

you'll pay full price for your seat BUT YOU'LL ONLY NEED THE EEEEEEEEEEDGE! — you’ll pay full price for your seat BUT YOU’LL ONLY NEED THE EEEEEEEEEEDGE!

There is spleef, archery, King of the hill, fishing and parkour to compete in. May the best person win!

One of these things is not like the others... — One of these things is not like the others…

Henry10030 meanwhile finished up his base and topped it off with a giant statue of themselves. Obviously so we don’t forget what they look like, lol.

Hachi has been working on… well, I still haven’t figured out what this is supposed to be. I just know that it is awesome.

To the south, Double Positive worked on several mob grinders of various sizes/mobs farms. Hence “SPAWNER LAND” written large friendly quartz letters.

We are still plagued with connection issues around 7:30 pm evey server run. I’ve tried prioritizing udp requests, periodically dumping the phone cache , closing all background app, etc and nothing really seems to help. Fortunately it seems to only be a thing in the earlier parts of the evening. More incentive to make this a Proper Server, though I did have a conversation with Hachi today weighing the pros an cons of running an Android mobile emulator (more stable, working mobs, not glitchy gameplay / max 5 players, lag) vs pocketmine (more people on at once, better computer resource management, no lag, php programmable / mobs and game behavior glitchy as all get out). All of that are problems for Future ARBT to tackle at some later point; Present ARBT needs to log off and get some sleep!

June 28, 2015October 5, 2017

Subway done! (For now, anyway.)

Note: Written before update 1.1.0 when the direction of the sunrise/set was fixed. North here is now west.

I am pleased and relieved to report that the 2 additional lines of the subway (Granite and Brick) are done. Obviously if there is world expansion to the east or west, the lines will also extend accordingly, but this is as good as they’re going to get for a while. I love when I get these tunnels finished, but boy howdy is building them tedious. If anyone knows of an Android mod that’ll let me dig out 5×5 squares, let me know. >_< Being a lover of random miscellaneous information, I spent a little time after completion riding the lines and timing roughly how long it takes to ride them end to end. (All times are traveling south from Grand Central Terminal.)

Swarmhut and 5 at Crystal Palace (back when Swarm didn’t have a face, lol)

Netherrack Line

Grand Central → Wilshire Castle	1:09
Wilshire Castle → Crystal Palace	1:33
Crystal Palace → Sand Baori	0:33
Sand Baori → Spawn	0:51
Spawn → 4 Guardians	0:52
4 Guardians → Southern Continent	1:29
Total	6:27

Granite Line

Grand Central → Wilshire Castle	1:13
Wilshire Castle → Crystal Palace	1:35
Crystal Palace → Sand Baori	0:46
Sand Baori → Wacker Tower	0:44
Total	4:18

Brick Line

Grand Central → Wilshire Castle	1:13
Wilshire Castle → Crystal Palace	1:35
Crystal Palace → Mt. Servermore	0:46
Total	3:34

I look forward to working on something above ground for a while. I seem to remember I still have a zombie pigman prison I haven’t quite finished…